Ex-PlayStation Exec Claims Lengthy AAA Game Development Is Unsustainable

[Peter_Brosdahl]

Image: Sony Interactive Entertainment



Former PlayStation executive Shawn Layden has had some interesting things to say about the industry recently. He sat down with Venture Beat’s Dean Takashi and shared thoughts about the current state of AAA game development.



With more than three decades at Sony Interactive Entertainment, Layden has definitely been around long enough to have some insights into the business. At one point, he oversaw nearly three thousand game developers and saw game budgets rise to over $150 million, giving perspective into the ever-growing costs of AAA games. His most recent project has been the newly released The Last of Us Part...

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[Uvilla]

Well, AI will probably facilitate some things, speed them up.

 

[Denpepe]

Plenty of AAA games that only last <10 hours for the single player parts like COD or BF series

 

[Burticus]

Shorter games with quicker release schedules are OK but only if the price reflects it. $60 for a 10 hour game is just BS.

 

[Brian_B]

I think it’s probably another case for the Netflix model...

you as the consumer wouldn’t pay for any specific title, you pay the Studio and they commission what they think will move subscriptions.

Not saying I like it, but probably where it’s headed.

 

[Grimlakin]

(This went from analysis to rant pretty quick. Sorry.)

Lets see if I can diagnose what is happening here a little bit and cut through some of the bs without actually being in game development. So take this with a grain of salt.

Triple A games either get crazy good reviews or get trashed from the get go. The development cost involved with a Triple A title is easily in the neighborhood of not in excess of 100 million dollars.

It is now bad press to have crunch time for developers so the window of time to complete a game or force completion is growing longer.

Going to market with bugs is a bad thing that everyone complains about but it's also sort of with a wink and a nod as long as those bugs get addressed swiftly.

Developers get burned out on specific studios work and want to move on.

Small studios that turn into self sustaining AAA studios are seen as an investment opportunity, then they are purchased the previous owners and potentially lead developers and others see a very nice payday. They are offered some greater sum for sticking it out for a contractually defined period of time. And they are restricted from discussing the purchase experience and culture issues.

Once the time window is up for these people to stay on it has often led to the self destruction of the studio that was purchased as an investment.

Mega Studios should not be interested in churning out Triple A titles as a publication house. Where they try to save money by having everyone work in a familiar way at a familiar cadence. That is more the problem than Triple A titles being too expensive to make.

Mega Studios should back away from direct studio engagement. I'm not saying they shouldn't invest but they should be more of an investment firm that focuses on Video games rather than a studio absorbing smaller studios and trying to create the 'perfect all video game making solution'. Instead they should find studios they like and invest/purchase them while offering them some financial stability but not enough that they arn't hungry for greater success. They also need to be willing to let a studio make mistakes and fall on it's ***. Possibly even fail. (This is when you can pluck talent and suggest/require other studios you are invested in to expand their resource footprint or offer them effectively first dibs on rockstar talent.)

So I would summarize to say that the Mega Studio method of Buying independent studios then trying to change how they work and their culture to fit into some mold someone at Mega Studio has decided is best because it worked for company Y really well. Is the WRONG way to do creative work.

EA could be the hero investment studio letting these creative groups that are already succeeding work together to grow and become better and let their art and creative direction shine. While still reaping profit.

JUST STOP TRYING TO DEFINE HOW ART SHOULD BE CREATED AND WHAT IT SHOULD LOOK LIKE! You're investing in ART, EA, Sony, Ubisoft, and so on. Stop trying to make it all look an work alike! THAT IS KILLING TRIPLE A GAMING!!!!

 

[Dan_D]

I think it’s probably another case for the Netflix model...

you as the consumer wouldn’t pay for any specific title, you pay the Studio and they commission what they think will move subscriptions.

Not saying I like it, but probably where it’s headed.

This is why the live service model adopted by games like Destiny 2 and Warframe are so attractive to the AAA developers. That's why we saw so many failed attempts at doing the same thing. Ghost Recon Breakpoint tried it, as did EA/BioWare with Anthem. Both of those games were disasters on that front. Ghost Recon is decent enough now, but UbiSoft wasn't remotely prepared to do a live service game with content releases that could keep up with player demand. It's now getting treated more like Wildlands rather than a looter shooter the way it was envisioned.

Meanwhile, Bungie has done a decent job at it even considering the occasional content drought. Given the cost of these games and their financial risks, it makes sense for companies to try and recoup costs and turn a profit over a protracted period of time rather than in a small window. There are a few games like CoD that can pull off a huge blockbuster initial sales run that makes a bunch of money, but with today's cancel culture, it's getting increasingly hard to do that. Big budget games like Anthem can die a quick death without ever making any money by being a bad game. Others, like the Last of Us 2 end up judged for all kinds of reasons well beyond the quality of the game.

Subscription based models make sense, as they work well enough for MMO's. Between those and microtransactions, games can be hugely profitable, but again its risky business given the long development cycles and high costs. I think we'll see more and more procedurally generated assets and worlds in games to help overcome some of these issues, but we are a long way off from being able to create the kind of content needed to sustain a lot of games.

The crux of this is, game companies need a base game that's good at its core. Then they need to be able to add smaller content drops to it which create challenge and time sinks for players. This is naturally easier to do with MMOs and looter shooters like Destiny 2. It's much harder for other types of games.

 

[Grimlakin]

Game companies can resolve the content glut rather easily...

Even for your big open world style games, be they looter shooter, driving games, or others...

Put content creation in the hands of the players. Let them submit their ideas to the developer for a quarterly contest. Then once they pick a winner compensate the winner and put out the new map segment. And do that on a cycle with whatever you need for new content.